Are you some kind of retail analyst?
Didn’t realise new look were so much in the shit, think house of Fraser are more shifting to online so more likely to boost click and collect which means less retail space?
I work in Trade Credit Insurance.
Had a recent meeting with some senior risk underwriters at one of the biggest credit insurers to get feedback on current 'hot' risks.
New Look is interesting. They had a good and effective business model, but changed their approach (and buying teams). My eldest daughter talks about how it went much more expensive, full of "Next type of stuff" when before it was cheap & cheerful - and popular with young people. More expensive, often more 'mature' product offering and they decimated their customer bedrock. They apparently had warehouses rammed with product that wasn't shifting following this change of tack, and ended up heavily-discounting. They've done a re-think and reverted to more like their old model, but the new lines will only really begin to properly feed in from autumn/winter 18/19. The question is whether they have the cashflow/access to funding to last till fortunes improve.
With House of Fraser, they were late to the party with an online offering, which wasn't great when they did launch it. They spent a lot redesigning their digital presence a year or two ago, but it was very poor. Last year, they were the only major retailer that saw their online sales contract (by 9%) - and this from an already low point. Their premises are generally not an ideal design for modern retail, and they did a sale-and-rent-back arrangement on a chunk of their estate. They've already written to landlords to try to negotiate rent reductions. There's also some doubt about how much support their Chinese owners would/could be able to provide. Xmas trading figures poor - decreased footfall & sales.
